Editorial: Action needed to narrow N.C.'s growing urban-rural education divide

CBC Editorial: Friday, March 24, 2023; editorial #8835

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

A decade ago the legislature took a shredder to teacher pay – eliminating salary boosts for longevity and getting advanced degrees. They front-loaded pay scales so teachers with the most experience got the smallest pay increases. Along with it, legislators abolished tenure and eliminated caps on class size and increased teaching workloads.

They choked the pipeline for bringing new teachers into classrooms by abolishing the nationally-recognized Teaching Fellows program that fed more than 8,500 college graduates into schools in every county – with 80% remaining in the classroom at least a year beyond the four-year commitment and 64% still teaching after six years. (The program was reestablished, at a much-diminished level, in 2017)

Now, all that is coming home to roost as school systems throughout North Carolina – urban and rural districts -- are seeing severe teaching vacancies. A month ago the state Department of Public Instruction reported classroom vacancies had jumped by more than 50%. Two rural school systems, Halifax and Hoke County schools, reported teacher vacancies at nearly 25%.

Local school systems are being forced to take matters into their own hands to retain the teachers on staff as well as attract others to fill the vacancies. Unfortunately, this approach will likely only exacerbate the documented vast differences in the quality of education children have access to, depending on where in North Carolina they live.

Wealthy school systems, such as Wake County, are dipping into their local education funds, to restore some of the benefits the legislature cut, in an effort to entice teachers to stay on the job as well as to recruit others to fill the vacancies.

Earlier this week the Wake School Board voted to give a pay boost to teachers – and other employees -- with advanced degrees (those who’d been receiving the boost before 2013 elimination have continued to retain it). As many as 650 Wake County teachers, instructional specialists, guidance counselors and others are estimated to be eligible.

However, most of the school districts in the state don’t have the local resources to do that.

All this is happening at a time when it has been indisputably established – repeatedly over the last 25 years -- that North Carolina has failed to keep its state Constitutional promise that EVERY child has a access to a quality education.

It also comes at a time when there is a consensus program to make sure every child in the state has access to a quality education, but the leaders of the state legislature are doing all they can to block it.

And it isn’t a matter of local schools not making the effort to provide the resources. “Lower wealth counties tax themselves at higher rates than wealthier counties but are still unable to generate comparable tax revenue to wealthier counties that make less taxing effort,” according to the recently released “Local School Finance Study” from the Public School Forum of North Carolina.

“The ten poorest districts taxed themselves at 1.6 times the average tax rate of the ten wealthiest counties in 2020-21. Residents living in lower wealth districts face a substantially greater financial burden to support public education while still finding that their schools are more poorly resourced than those in wealthier counties.”

The solution is simple. The state has more than ample resources to do it. The legislature should reinstate the salary supplements it abolished so EVERY teacher and school district employee who qualifies – regardless of where they work – gets the salary supplements.

Further, the General Assembly should end its efforts to obstruct imposition of the Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Program that provides clear direction to assure every school system in the state has the ability to fulfill the state constitutional right that every child has the opportunity to a quality education.

North Carolina has a sound plan to make sure every child, regardless of where they live or the school they attend, is in a well-resourced classroom, led by a highly qualified teacher and school staff.

Implement the plan now. It will do more than anything else to address the faculty vacancies and other challenges the state’s schools face.

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